Do blogs constitute original journalism? That is, do they actively seek out their own stories, do their own reporting and then break the news to the public? It’s a tricky question. Journalism, in the traditional sense, is the process through which the public becomes informed on issues, both local and national, that pertain to their lives. Ideally, a well educated public will be able to steer its democracy in the most beneficial direction. As it stands, blogging achieves a sort of patchwork fulfillment of these criteria.
As far as local journalism is concerned, blogging has been something of a blessing. In a 2007 New Yorker article, Nicholas Lemann points out that the availability of blogging has broken “the long-standing choke hold on public information and discussion that the traditional media... have supposedly been able to maintain up to now.” As more major news outlets continue to make cuts to their investigative and local bureaus, bloggers and online journalists, to a limited but growing degree, have taken up the charge. Without requiring many resources, people are now able to report and spread information on local issues, which are becoming harder to find even in established local press outlets. For example, The Blog of the Unknown Writer, based in NY, reports primarily on small stories of social injustice such as the death of an army veteran who was turned away from a hospital and died when he refused to participate in an Alzheimer’s study. In addition to this, an alternative issue like autism can receive coverage it wouldn’t normally receive in the mainstream press. However, blogs often don’t report, as much as they compile information and provide a forum for discussion.
National and global blogging suffers from the same problem on a higher level. Blogs that focus on larger issues still largely rely on the mainstream press for their information instead of breaking news themselves. While there are exceptions to this, such as the cutting edge blogging of the Scooter Libby trial, most blogs simply regurgitate, spin and analyze what they hear from the major outlets. Effectively covering national and global issues requires a plethora of resources and reporters covering multiple angles in multiple locations. Blogs, which for the most part are single person operations, simply don’t have the capacity to do this, regardless of the writer’s skill or prior experience. While corruption in the local Parent-Teacher Association can be uncovered with a few phone calls and a little determination, covering
Both forms of blogging suffer from issues of credibility as well. While institutions like the New York Times can be held accountable for faulty or false reporting, as they were when Jayson Blair was caught fabricating stories, bloggers are free to post what they like without the watchful eye of editors and fact checkers. Whereas major journalistic institutions have a well defined responsibility to the public, many bloggers do not hold themselves to the same principles. This isn’t because they see the rules as useless and outdated, but rather because they think that what they do is too far removed from traditional journalism for such rules to apply in a practical fashion.
This isn’t to say that blogging doesn’t have potential. Its ability to break stories ahead of the mainstream media, like Matt Drudge did with the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal, has already been demonstrated and the potential for dissenting opinion and constructive public discourse is staggering. However, a system needs to be developed and put in place that helps make blogs more accountable and reliable as legitimate news sources. If blogs can earn the trust of the public through formalization and accountability, then they will have begun to fulfill the role of traditional journalism.
